Forging a National Agenda For a Just Society

In his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in San
Francisco, Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York painted with broad strokes a
vision of America in the late 1980's and beyond. He spoke of fairness
and reasonableness, of civil rights and human dignity, and of
mutuality--the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all.

From those opening remarks on through Walter F. Mondale's acceptance
speech, there emerged a clear consensus on one overall goal--to restore
to the policymaking process a sense of community concern and social
responsibility for the condition of all society's members, particularly
the least advantaged. It is now left to Democratic party strategists to
give detail to that vision and to forge a national agenda that draws on
the strength of party tradition, regroups the old and new Democratic
coalitions, and addresses some difficult questions as we move toward a
more just society. Education and the federal role in education must sit
high on that agenda, and equality of educational opportunity must serve
as a guiding force in its formulation.

As the Democrats set about this complex task, they would be wise to
draw from the past--not only sentimental memories, but also lessons on
the difficulties of transforming noble principles into workable social
policy. This is an ideal year in which to take stock of our recent
social history. Just 30 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v.
Board of Education, outlawed racially segregated schools. Just 20 years
ago, the Congress expanded the equality principle into a program of
social reform in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In Brown, the Court unanimously stated that because of "the
importance of education to our society ... the opportunity of an
education ... where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right
which must be made available to all on equal terms." Equality of
educational opportunity was thereby raised to the level of a
constitutionally protected right. In the context of that decision and
the year 1954, equality clearly meant, at a minimum, entitlement to an
education in a nonsegregated setting. Whatever else that concept might
mean has never been resolved by the struggles of Congress, the federal
courts, and the society at large to define it further.

The Brown decision established the setting in which future political
actors would operate. But it was not until a decade later that the
strong leadership of Lyndon B. Johnson combined with firm Congressional
support to translate Brown's legal mandate into a broader national
agenda. During the late 1960's, the three branches of government worked
hand in hand to eliminate race discrimination and overcome the effects
of poverty. The dominant theme in that period--equality--was built on
the idea of human dignity, political participation, and individual choice.
Social policy was formulated in the context of welfare-state goals--government would distribute
public funds to raise needy individuals to a minimum educational level.
Two major pieces of legislation, both premised on the idea of equal
access, emerged from that era. In 1964, Congress enacted the Civil
Rights Act. Title VI of that law prohibited discrimination on the basis
of race, color, or national origin in federally funded programs. The
next year, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 [ESEA]
provided an unprecedented amount of federal aid for school systems to
use in creating remedial programs for the educationally and
economically disadvantaged.

As we approached the 1970's, other groups--the physically and
emotionally handicapped, language minorities, women--began to make
equality demands on courts and Congress. Educational reformers used
legislation and litigation to achieve educational rights, not just for
racial minorities, but for these newly identified groups as well. As a
result of such advocacy efforts, the Congress and the federal courts
struggled to breathe substance into the equality mandate of Brown and
to apply that mandate to a variety of groups with disparate histories
of social neglect. The equality concept changed in that period, from a
concept of individual rights to one of group or collective rights. Laws
such as P.L. 94-142 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
were the result.

As the equality movement gained momentum, it became clear that not
only is equality for all expensive, but equality for some may intrude
on the liberty of others. And so equality competed with local autonomy
and individual choice as values underlying the policy-making process.
And when resources declined and costs escalated during the 1970's,
equality began to give way to diversity--diversity of needs and taste.
Mandatory busing to achieve racial balance had moved north, striking at
housing patterns and neighborhood schools, and prompting calls for
freedom of association. The education of the handicapped was diverting
scarce local and state funds from other groups and individuals.
Bilingual education as a prescribed methodology for linguistic-minority
students had struck at the essence of America's identity and was taking
jobs away from nonbilingual teachers. The "melting pot" had become a
seething cauldron of ethnic-group demands. Federal "assistance," many
felt, had evolved into "coercion," as the government threatened to
withdraw federal funds from school systems found in noncompliance with
civil-rights statutes. America's strong political culture of local
control over education was besieged from all sides. Middle America felt
overlooked and overtaxed.

It was against this backdrop of political confusion, economic
retrenchment, and moral despair that Ronald" Reagan approached the 1980
Presidential election. He built his platform on the ideas of limited
government and constrained fiscal spending. Unlike the Great Society
programs that had bypassed the states and created a direct interchange
between federal and local government, Mr. Reagan's "new federalism" had
at its core a redefinition of state government as the pivot of American
federalism. In exchange for greater administrative autonomy, states
would assume increased financial responsibility for maintaining
social-welfare programs. More specifically, the Republican platform in
1980 promised to "... restore common sense and quality to education
..., replace the crazy-quilt of wasteful programs with a system of
block grants ..., support deregulation ..., halt forced busing ...,
enact tuition tax relief into law."

What promised to be a federal retreat from educational
priority-setting has in fact translated into a "disinvestment" in
public schooling and a retreat from the equality principle. Statistics
demonstrate that federal programs of the pre-Reagan era have indeed
succeeded in providing effective education and promoting participatory
rights of students and parents. Remedial programs operated under Title
I of ESEA have raised achievement scores in reading and mathematics.
Title VII of the same act mandated bilingual programs that have reduced
dropout rates among Hispanics. Voluntary desegregation programs under
the Emergency School Aid Act of 1972 have encouraged innovative
programs to desegregate schools. Title IX's prohibition against sex
discrimination has significantly increased the participation of women
in school athletics. Yet all these were targeted by the Reagan
Administration for budget reductions, consolidation into state block
grants, deregulation, or weakened enforcement efforts.

With these ups and downs in federal commitment, equality of
educational opportunity in 1984 has assumed a different contour for
different groups. For racial minorities, there are indicators of a
return to pre-Brown "separate but equal" programs and facilities. For
linguistic minorities, "equal" now means "effective" as measured by a
"whatever works" standard. More than a decade of controversy
surrounding proper goals and methodology has brought us full circle
back to assimilation as the end, English-language instruction as the
means, and achievement-test scores as the measure of success for
children whose dominant language is not English. As for handicapped
students, equal education translates merely into the provision of
"some" benefit--a sharp departure from the "maximization of potential"
goals of the previous decade. Recent federal policies define equal
educational opportunity not as "equal" or "more is equal," but as
"different" treatment that is circumscribed by consideration of
financial cost and administrative burden. As for women, equality has
never gone beyond equal treatment per se--there has been no affirmative
action for female students. However, weakened enforcement, narrow court
rulings, and limited financial resources pose the threat of regression
to "less than equal" services for them.

Considering both this turbulent past and a present environment in which
there is little moral commitment to the disadvantaged, the Democratic
party must formulate a national education agenda. As history
demonstrates, policy innovations are often shaped by Presidential
leadership. LBJ's "war on poverty" led to passage of ESEA Richard M.
Nixon's "war on busing" led to passage of the Emergency School Aid Act
to promote voluntary desegregation strategies. Mr. Reagan's "war on
government waste" led to sweeping changes in federal school finance
through consolidation, deregulation, and budget cuts. And history will
show whether Mr. Mondale's "war on self-interest" will revitalize
America's spirit of community concern and social responsibility.

Innovations in public policy can also grow out of national crisis or
powerful waves of public opinion. The recent push for quality education
is one example. As we well know, several major reports published in the
past two years have leveled severe criticism against the American
school system and have jarred the educational establishment, the
federal government, and the American public into action. Yes, we must
address such broad-based issues as personnel recruitment, curriculum
reform, and standards for excellence. But we must take heed that
"quality" education does not merely replace "equality" as the slogan of
the decade.

When we cut through the rhetoric, we see two perspectives dominating
the equality/quality debate. First, there are those, like Mr. Reagan,
who see a link between the civil-rights reforms of the past two decades
and the decline in educational excellence. Underlying this view is the
mistaken belief that equality and excellence are mutually exclusive,
that by allocating resources to meet the needs of the disadvantaged we
have neglected the needs of the larger population. In reality, the
problems plaguing public education in America stem from a far more
complex set of social, political, and economic factors.

Then there is the general feeling that quality education must be our
primary concern, and that if quality is ensured, then equality will
automatically follow. This persuasive political argument rings hollow
when played out on the state and local levels, however. It assumes that
the needs of all children, including the disadvantaged, would be
afforded equal concern and at least equal resources in the
policy-making process at these levels. History has proven
otherwise.

The equality/quality debate has little merit. It has proven to be a
mental exercise at best and diversionary at worst. In practice,
equality and quality are mutually supportive. Both focus on the
educational process and provide substantive criteria for the provision
of an appropriate education based on individual needs. In fact,
discourse on equality has provided the terminology and established the
perspective for the current dialogue on excellence. Over the past 20
years, a substantial body of case and statutory education law has
developed under legal norms" that use equality language. Terms used by
courts and legislators--such as "appropriate," "adequate," and
"meaningful" education--have focused our attention away from futile
attempts to equalize inputs (resources) or outputs (test scores) and
toward the process of teaching and learning in between those two
points. As we have become more concerned with providing for the
diverse needs of diverse students, the right to an equal education has
developed as a statement of substantive values and not merely as a
procedural guarantee of fair process.

It cannot be denied that equality demands making choices among
individuals and programs. It demands ordering priorities and developing
criteria for allocating goods and services. It is also true that the
separation of powers, federalism, and a tradition of local educational
control will continue to loom over the policymaking process. But if the
progress made in the past three decades toward reaching a more just
society is not to be lost, then we must strike a careful balance
between need and merit and between justice and individualism in
redistributing society's scarce resources. This is no easy task for a
nation whose brief history is both tainted by institutionalized
injustice and built on individual freedoms and dignity.

Our struggle to realize the equality mandate of Brown has taught us
that the road between moral precept and public policy is rough and
winding. As the Democratic party attempts to revitalize that mandate,
it must not be immobilized by the mandate's limitations but rather
energized by its substantive force.

We now know that equality as a policy goal in itself is unrealistic.
Equality of results is limited by economic conditions and by
differences in individual potential. But we also know that equal
treatment alone often does not suffice. In fact, justice demands that
"equality for all" must mean "different or more is equal" for some. We
may never achieve the equality ideal, but it must continue to serve as
a guiding principle we use to define educational rights. This
conception of equality as a direction for educational policymaking is a
moral necessity.

Rosemary C. Salomone is an associate professor at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education, where she teaches education law and
finance. A lawyer and former federal-program administrator, she has
recently completed a book on equality and the federal role.

Vol. 03, Issue 39-40, Page 44, 40

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